Harvard University

Self Description

December 2002: "Harvard University,...is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States....the University has grown...to an enrollment of more than 18,000 degree candidates, including undergraduates and students in 10 graduate and professional schools. An additional 13,000 students are enrolled in one or more courses in the Harvard Extension School. Over 14,000 people work at Harvard, including more than 2,000 faculty. There are also 7,000 faculty appointments in affiliated teaching hospitals....Harvard College was established in 1636..."http://www.news.harvard.edu/guide/intro/index.html

Third-Party Descriptions

July 2013: "Washington University has an endowment similar in size, per student, to those of Emory and Vassar — between $300,000 and $400,000 as of mid-2012, wealthier than all but a few dozen colleges in the country, and Washington and Lee’s endowment is significantly larger, the Times research shows. At Harvard and Yale, with the largest endowments in the country, Pell enrollment was near the 15 percent average for the 50 most competitive colleges; at Princeton, with the largest per-capita endowment, it was lower, 12 percent, though its officials say the rate is higher for the freshman class starting this fall."

October 2012: 'Some elite colleges in particular have Orwellian speech codes that are so vague and broad that they would never pass constitutional muster at state-financed universities. Harvard is a particularly egregious example. Last year, incoming Harvard freshmen were pressured by campus officials to sign an oath promising to act with “civility” and “inclusiveness” and affirming that “kindness holds a place on par with intellectual attainment.” Harry R. Lewis, a computer science professor and a former dean of Harvard College, was quick to criticize the oath. “For Harvard to ‘invite’ people to pledge to kindness is unwise, and sets a terrible precedent,” he wrote on his blog. “It is a promise to control one’s thoughts.”'

February 2012: "In fact, the Education Department is currently investigating a complaint against Harvard — Jeremy Lin’s alma mater — for allegedly discriminating against Asian Americans in admissions. The department is also looking at Princeton, where a faculty member’s own research has shown that Asian Americans need SAT scores about 140 points higher than white students’ — when everything else is equal — to have the same chance of getting into an elite college."

November 2011: "Elite universities such as Harvard, Yale and Stanford give aid to families earning as much as $200,000, which less-selective schools say puts pressure on them to also offer grants to higher-income families. Education experts say such subsidies mean less help for lower- and middle-income students, who fall deeper into debt to pay tuition."

June 2010: "At a handful of private universities with sizable endowments, including Princeton, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, the goal is quite literally to eliminate loan debt for most graduating seniors."

May 2009: "at Harvard and other top business schools, there has been an explosion of interest in ethics courses and in student activities — clubs, lectures, conferences — about personal and corporate responsibility and on how to view business as more than a money-making enterprise, but part of a large social community."

March 2008: "CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Two issues of Muslim practice — whether the call to prayer should ring out across Harvard Yard and whether the university should grant women separate gym hours — have unleashed small waves of controversy over how Harvard practices tolerance."

February 2008: "But the act doesn't require colleges to release individual crime reports or police-department personnel files, and some private campuses decline to do so. At Harvard University, for instance, the campus police department regularly updates a crime log on its website, listing brief descriptions and general locations of incidents. But some entries are no longer than a sentence, and names are not released unless someone is arrested."

September 2007: There is almost an iron law of higher education: the more selective a school is, the fewer low-income students it has. At Harvard and Yale, only about 10 percent of undergraduates receive federal Pell Grants. (Typically, students from the bottom 40 percent of the income distribution are eligible for the Pell.) Even at top public universities, the share is often 15 percent or less. The colleges that are filled with poor and middle-class students almost invariably have low graduation rates. So their graduates are more likely to end up on the wrong side of the 21st century’s educational divide. A bachelor’s degree seems out of reach to a large portion of the American population, and, as a result, other countries have closed the gap in educational attainment with the United States over the last generation.

February 2006: Lawrence H. Summers, the president of Harvard University, announced yesterday that he will resign his post, bringing to close a stormy tenure in which the former Treasury secretary made impolitic remarks about women, alienated many black professors and repeatedly clashed with the faculty at America's most prominent university.

July 2001: Notably absent from the group that endorsed the guidelines were Harvard and Princeton, two of the wealthiest universities in the United States, which have already increased their financial aid beyond what most of their competitors offer. Both universities said they agreed with the need-blind approach to financial aid but did not sign the agreement because it would have reduced the aid they give to students.

Articles and Resources

QUOTE: UVA's emphasis on honor is so pronounced that since 1998, 183 people have been expelled for honor-code violations such as cheating on exams. And yet paradoxically, not a single student at UVA has ever been expelled for sexual assault. "Think about it," says Susan Russell, whose UVA daughter's sexual-assault report helped trigger a previous federal investigation. "In what world do you get kicked out for cheating, but if you rape someone, you can stay?"

QUOTE: With affirmative action under attack and economic mobility feared to be stagnating, top colleges profess a growing commitment to recruiting poor students. But a comparison of low-income enrollment shows wide disparities among the most competitive private colleges. A student at Vassar, for example, is three times as likely to receive a need-based Pell Grant as one at Washington University in St. Louis.

QUOTE: Colleges and universities are supposed to be bastions of unbridled inquiry and expression, but they probably do as much to repress free speech as any other institution in young people’s lives.... Since the 1980s, in part because of “political correctness” concerns about racially insensitive speech and sexual harassment, and in part because of the dramatic expansion in the ranks of nonfaculty campus administrators, colleges have enacted stringent speech codes.

QUOTE: In our college admissions process, especially, we punish Asian Americans who hew too closely to the stereotype. Rather than rewarding students for their individual effort and achievement, we effectively penalize them for doing so well as a group.

QUOTE: Elite universities such as Harvard, Yale and Stanford give aid to families earning as much as $200,000, which less-selective schools say puts pressure on them to also offer grants to higher-income families. Education experts say such subsidies mean less help for lower- and middle-income students, who fall deeper into debt to pay tuition.

QUOTE: More than 50 colleges -- including elite private schools and flagship state universities in Virginia and Maryland -- have eliminated or capped loans in their financial aid portfolios for some or all students, promising enough aid in grants and work-study to cover most of the gap between what they charge and what each student can afford to pay. At a handful of private universities with sizable endowments, including Princeton, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, the goal is quite literally to eliminate loan debt for most graduating seniors.

QUOTE: This has been a year of sackcloth and ashes for the world’s business schools. Critics have accused them of churning out jargon-spewing economic vandals. Many professors have accepted at least some of the blame for the global catastrophe.

QUOTE: the issue of ethics and corporate social responsibility has taken on greater urgency among students about to graduate. While this might easily be dismissed as a passing fancy — or simply a defensive reaction to the current business environment — business school professors say that is not the case.

QUOTE: Critics of universities say that while sizable portions of university endowments may be restricted, the wealthiest universities still could use more of their endowments to reduce tuition. “It is simply false to claim that donor restrictions prevent increased spending," said Lynne Munson, an adjunct research fellow at the Center for College Affordability and Productivity.

QUOTE: Two issues of Muslim practice — whether the call to prayer should ring out across Harvard Yard and whether the university should grant women separate gym hours — have unleashed small waves of controversy over how Harvard practices tolerance.

QUOTE: A Connecticut commission ruled last week that Yale University must provide access to campus police personnel records. It's the latest in a series of rulings mandating greater openness at private universities.

QUOTE: Questions about study abroad programs were raised in an article in The New York Times last summer that described how some program providers offer colleges rebates, free and subsidized travel, unpaid seats on advisory boards, help with back-office services, marketing stipends and other benefits. Critics say the arrangements...can limit students’ options and result in higher prices for those seeking international experience.

QUOTE: But in the early 1990s, the elite campuses began to pull back from their aggressive affirmative-action policies, and in 1996, California voters passed the California Civil Rights Initiative, also known as Proposition 209. After that, race could no longer be a factor in government hiring or public-university admissions. The number of black students at both Berkeley and U.C.L.A. plummeted, and at U.C.L.A. the declines continued throughout the next decade.

QUOTE: Twenty-five out of 41 governments studied block or filter internet content, according to a survey carried out by OpenNet Initiative (ONI), which is made up of groups at Cambridge University, Harvard Law School, Oxford University and the University of Toronto. This compares to just a few countries filtering content five years ago, said the researchers. The governments are not just blocking websites but also services and applications such as Google Maps or Skype.

QUOTE: If their offspring has stalked a peer or stayed in a mental-health clinic or been watched for suicidal inclinations at college, they want to know. Immediately. Yet parents may be among the last people to be told of any concerns. Because of strict confidentiality laws, such problems cannot be reported to parents – or roommates or others close to a young adult in trouble.

QUOTE: ...OSHA’s practices under the Bush administration, which vowed to limit new rules and roll back what it considered cumbersome regulations that imposed unnecessary costs on businesses and consumers. Across Washington, political appointees — often former officials of the industries they now oversee — have eased regulations or weakened enforcement of rules on issues like driving hours for truckers, logging in forests and corporate mergers.

QUOTE: Some privacy and minority advocates are now seeing credit as a civil rights issue as minorities start to fight employers and insurers who base decisions on credit histories. Their effort could slow the near doubling in credit checks by employers in the past decade, which impacts millions of Americans who are struggling with debt. "It's definitely a civil rights issue because of the growing use of credit reports and credit scores for hiring, renting an apartment, insurance, and the fact that people of color have not been integrated into the credit scoring system as much as traditional, white, middle-class America"...

QUOTE: critics say it also rewards advantaged students in a system already skewed in their favor...a national conversation about the equity and transparency of admissions, the fairness of early admission, and how any number of admissions practices contribute to the pressure cooker of the application process.

QUOTE: Harvard has come to believe that the practice unfairly favors students from sophisticated high schools and families -- and that binding programs favor those who have little concern about financial aid.